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12 September 08

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The uncomfortableness of space

You know it when it hits you: you’ve come through a very busy patch where the work was all go-go-go, where you didn’t have to think about what project was next – you just worked and designed autopilot, and things go are swell. You even worry that there isn’t enough time for invoicing (though it’s a small worry compared to the multiple deadlines you have to met). Gradually, you hit a patch where the work is settling down, and well, you just have time to ‘think’ again. What’s that? Think? Yes, and breathe, and then watch the time on your computer, with that comes an overwhelming sensation of anxiety.

What’s this anxiety about, you ask? Well if we put down as a life rule that what goes up must come down, if you’re down, that means you don’t have 100 requests coming to you at the same time and, believe it or not – that vast space of not being needed is scary. It’s happening to me and I can assure you I may well be making the ‘problem’ bigger than it is. Being someone who’s come through multiple big deadlines on my own, I’m used to working fast, efficiently, and in control. What happens is I’m still running on marathon speed, and then I run out of jobs to do. I haven’t actually ‘run out’, I just haven’t got a list of 20+ anymore.

Am I blowing things out of proportion?
Well let’s capture my thought trail after 5 months of non-stop work. Checking inbox, starred items in Gmail are declining, that’s strange…no longer feeling like I need to update my ‘TO DO’ List in Mail anymore. Checking for emails way too often, thoughts criticising myself that I’m obviously not doing enough. So, I decide I’m going to take the projects a bit slower. Guess what happened in my head? I had thoughts that I was taking too long, and this lead to a feeling of pressure, before I knew it, I eventually dreaded doing anymore projects. I feel like I’m procrastinating! I’m not used to not being pressured to do things fast, and now that i have time, my ego is saying it’s wrong and I’m not good enough for doing it slow! What?! Where did this come from? Wow, and you know what came next? Guilt. Guilt that I really haven’t done enough – not good enough. And that was what caused the anxiety.

So in writing this, I’m doing well by being aware of all the aspects that comes with the path of freelancing – things I can’t ignore which I knew I had to be prepared for but had not really thought about. What happens when it’s mad busy? I worked and worked. I didn’t think about how I would prepare myself if I didn’t have all that work anymore. In fact, having space is only healthy for me to take a break, refresh my mind, catch up on some research and even take a break from doing anything for a while. Now that’s a big challenge for me – doing nothing. While I’ve begun practicing meditation as a daily exercise I still find this ‘space’ more terrifying than being extremely busy. I’ll tell you what though – the ‘space’ gave me grief initially because of my own critical thoughts of myself. And as time comes and because I am now aware of this thought pattern I can learn to appreciate that this is good for me. I have to learn to deal with my own thoughts, I mean how bad is it, once and a while, to have a bit of freedom to myself? Really.

I urge all the very hard working freelancers out there, if you have experienced anything like what I’ve talked about today, it’s really okay to be in that ‘space’. I shall from today start to appreciate the things I can do to refresh myself, instead of being bogged down in negative thoughts about what I’m not doing, or what I ‘should’ be doing instead.